Kanter told reporters after the team’s win over the Los Angeles Lakers on Friday that he would not attend the London game because of the possibility of an assassination attempt from spies of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s regime.

“I talked to the front office and they said I’m not going because of that freaking lunatic, the Turkish president (Recep Tayyip Erdoğan),” Kanter said. “There’s a chance that I can get killed out there. So that’s why I talked to the front office. I’m not going so I’m just going to stay here, just practice. It’s pretty sad because it affects my career, my basketball. Because I want to be out there but just because of that one lunatic guy, that one maniac, I can’t go out there and do my job. It’s pretty sad.”

Asked about his level of concern for being murdered, Kanter said, “Oh yeah. Easy. They have a lot of spies there. I can be killed easily.”

This, of course, is not the only time that Kanter has had his life disrupted by Erdogan, a man who the Washington Post Editorial Board once described as “transforming Turkey into a totalitarian prison.” Kanter has run into much more serious circumstances due to the ruler of his homeland, but this will be the first time that conflict has spilled onto an NBA court.

Enes Kanter’s history with Turkey and Erdogan

Kanter’s clash with Erdogan stems from his vocal support of Fethullah Gulen, an exiled Islamic cleric currently living Pennsylvania who Erdogan publicly accused of organizing a failed coup attempt in 2016. That embrace of Gulen has caused Kanter’s family, who live in Turkey, to disown the center, though that didn’t stop Kanter’s father from being arrested and reportedly sentenced to 15 years in prison for “being a member of a terrorist organization.”